Microsoft calls for new blood

The software giant has used its Build event in a bid to get more developers working with its applications

The software giant shared the latest adoption figures for its Windows 10 OS, now used by 500 million people, and also that 100 million commercial users were now using Office 365 every month.

In his keynote the firm’s CEO Satya Nadella appealed to the developer community to get more involved with the vendor.

“In a world of near infinite compute power and an exponential growth in data, we are focused on empowering every developer to build applications for this new era of intelligent cloud and intelligent edge,” he alleged.

The firm has developed more services for developers on its Azure platform and extensions to Microsoft Graph, which can provide insights that should help firms manage devices better.

Rob Howard, director, Office 365 ecosystem marketing at Microsoft, said that there were plenty of opportunities for developers to work with its products and add value and even those resellers that were not developing their own programmes there were still chances to get something out of the software.

“In a lot of cases they are either taking an offer that an ISV has built around Office 365 and taking a packaged offer to those customers, so they are really tailoring Office with the ISV to their customer needs. Or in a lot of cases they are building their own custom solutions,” he said.

Microsoft said that partners who get involved with its products have the chance to flog further services.

Office offers voice, video and security areas for the channel had been able to add further services.